1/ Thoughts on Disney's Analyst Day.

Obviously a longtime Disney D2C bull; I was astounded, shocked by slate's quality, range, volume.

This is Disney going beyond a digital "Vault" plus originals. It is saying all of your favorite stories, more,

2/ Not just a stronger Disney+, but one that hugely raises the tablestakes of competition, growth, press coverage, notability.

Paramount+ plans new Star Trek year round. Feels quaint now. Peacock will have a Jurassic Park + Fast series eventually. Cool.

https://t.co/yaH4k4L1GA
3/ In "Content, Cars, and Comparisons in the 'Streaming Wars'", I wrote about how Disney $1B in content spend gets several billion of equivalent spend through its resonance

Mando was a top 5 show per @ParrotAnalytics in 2019. Disney thinks it can have 10 "Top 5s" a year.
4/ Trade talk can be misleading, but it takes only a cursory look at Twitter, the most popular shows of the past decade (Walking Dead, Thrones, Mando, Stranger Things), Disney's dominance at the box office (8 of top 10 in 2019) and wonder how to beat this

https://t.co/t8l0tQvuu1
5/ Roadmap doesn't just suck oxygen out of streaming wars (as Netflix did from 2014-18), it will enable Disney+ to rapidly grow its price

If I pay $54 a year to use Disney+ for 2 months, what happens when it's year-round?

Worth $15 month in 2023.

https://t.co/wyLkyzfqi8
6/ Disney obviously sandbagged its original 60-90MM estimate, but elevating this forecast to 230-260MM on the same time horizon, one year in, has to be the largest elevation at a company of this size... ever?
7/ Disney spoke about how much more popular Disney+ was with households without kids. That's key.

At the same time, half of those I know with kids... had set-up iPads for their kids to watch a four hour corporate event... out of enthusiasm for Disney+. That's unreplicable
8/ This is an impossibly great company. And still surprised.

From Oct 2019:
Disney, IP, and "Returns to Marginal Affinity"
https://t.co/8Rapc2gHi4
https://t.co/KDwt3Lh2c9
9/ Also important is to note the extraordinary talent Disney was able to attract despite (1) Capped backends; (2) IP constraints; (3) Disney+ centric distribution.

Darren Aronofsky making Disney+ docuseries? Patty Jenkins doing Star Wars? Amy Adams doing an Enchanted 2?

More from Economy

The argument for deficits & debt raising interest rates in the US is not increased credit risk, it is that interest rates are a function of economic fundamentals, flows & policy. Deficits/debt change those.

I can't tell if I'm agreeing or disagreeing with @jc_econ.


Increasing government spending or reducing taxes increases demand (or reduces saving). This raises the price of loanable funds or the interest rate.

In a dynamic context, more demand means a stronger economy, the central bank raises interest rates sooner, and long rates rise.

(As an aside, we are not close to the United States needing to worry about credit risk and the risks are more overstated than understated in most other advanced economies too. But credit risk is not always & everywhere irrelevant, just look at the UK in 1976 or Canada in 1994.)

Interest rates have fallen over the last 20 yrs while debt has risen. This does not necessarily mean that debt rising causes interest rates to fall. It could also mean that other things have happened at he same time that pushed down interest rates more than debt pushed them up.

The suspects for these "other things" include slower productivity growth, slower popln growth, higher inequality, less investment, etc. All of which either increase the supply of saving or reduce the demand for investment, reducing the equilibrium interest rate.

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